To:THE EDITORS OFZA PRAVDU

Written:Written December 16, 1913Published:First published in part in 1961 inIstorichesky ArkhivNo. 2.

      Published in full in 1964 inCollected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 48.

      Sent from Cracow to St. Petersburg.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1977],

      Moscow,Volume 43,

      page366.Translated:Martin Parker and Bernard IsaacsTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

...[1]Ourrepresentative’s telegram, which I received yesterday, says on this
question only: “unification entrust ed to executive.”

Andso the question is not
clear.[3]

Justin case, and subject to the extremely important reservation that
there should be no haste in publishing it, I suggest the following text of
an editorial statement (seeing that the “storm” has already been raised
in the dirty tea-cup of the Burenin-Gamma newspaper).

Thedecision of the International Socialist Bureau to call a conference
of Russia’s Social-Democrats—those working in Russia, of course, and not
the shadows of them abroad—fully meets with our approval. Such a
conference will help most clearly to expose the treachery to the Party on
the part of the liquidator gentry and the Burenin methods of fellows like
Gamma, of whom it is high time that Social-Democracy rid itself.

Tomorrow(or the day after, at the latest) I shall probably receive a
detailed report from London. I shall then write to you immediately again,
and if it isnecessarynot to publish the statement I am sending
you (i.e., the one on the preceding
			       page 3[2])

Ishall wire: hold it up. This will mean, consequently, that
page 3 is not to he published.

[1]Thebeginning of the letter is missing.—Ed.

[3]Thisletter to the editors ofZa Pravduwas the second letter
written by Lenin on receipt of the first reports concerning the decisions
of the December meeting of the International Socialist Bureau of the Second
International on the question of unity within the R.S.D.L.P. (see present
edition, Vol. 19, pp. 516–18).

TheDecember meeting of the I.S.B., held in London on December 13 and
14 (N.S.), 1918, adopted a resolution on this point moved by Kautsky on
behalf of the German delegation. In a speech on December 14 introducing his
resolution Kautsky declared that “the old Social-Democratic party in
Russia has disappeared”. It was to be restored on the basis of the Russian
workers’ urge for unity. In his articles “A Good Resolution and a Bad
Speech” and “Kautsky’s Unpardonable Error” Lenin examined the resolution
and qualified Kautsky’s speech as monstrous (see present edition, Vol. 19,
pp. 528–30 and 546–47).

Ata conference held in July 1914 in Brussels in accordance with a
decision of the I.S.B., the leaders of the Second International, under the
guise of “reconciling” the Bolsheviks with the liquidators, demanded of
the Bolsheviks that they cease their criticism of the liquidators. The
Bolsheviks refused to bow to this demand and continued their irreconcilable
struggle against the liquidators, the enemies of the labour movement.